In an interview with the magazine, Gilligan gives the best and most honest description of what being a phenomenal success feels like.

This description comes in answer to the question: "I think everybody knew the ending would be a big deal, but it really turned into as big and feverish a phenomenon as I can remember. What happened?"

Gilligan:

Have you ever been sitting at your desk and you crumple up a piece of paper and, without even looking, you just toss it over your shoulder and it goes straight into the wastebasket? You didn’t think about it. You didn’t stress about it. You just did it. And now that you’re thinking about it, you could never do it again in a million years, no matter how hard you tried. That’s what this was like. We worked our butts off, but everybody works their butts off in TV. We tried to make the best show it was humanly possible to make, but you know, the guys on According to Jim did the same thing. As to why this thing hit…I could make up some stream of nonsense, but honestly…I wish I could explain it, because then I might have a fighting chance on TV in the future. The truth is, I just have to be satisfied that it happened at all.